WHOMUSCLED JESSE HELMS?
Who Muscled Jesse Helms? Why has Jesse Helms suddenly softened his opposition to the chemical-weapons treaty? The Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, thought to be an implacable foe of the...
...For months, Helms had indicated that unless there were major changes in the treaty he would keep it bottled up in his committee and thus prevent the full Senate from voting on it...
...Shelby did not discuss the resignation, and Inhofe brought it up, not to call Lake a traitor, but to probe whether Lake's "strongly, even passionately held policy views" made him fit to act as a neutral purveyor of intelligence to the president...
...In describing the unraveling of the nomination, Lewis wrote—using the passive voice, though the piece was harshly ad hominem—"Then it was suggested that Mr...
...It does not...
...I understand," he/she wrote, "how your staff might be wary of allowing America to see an image of you or Ms...
...Reached on the telephone, Lewis said that he had in mind Sen...
...We don't want to have to do it a third time...
...Inhofe also mentioned that Lake had written that he had joined a demonstration against the war on the day before he resigned...
...T he Washington Post's Reliable Sources column reported gleefully last week that a prominent Democrat received a fund-raising letter from the Republican party...
...Lake was unpatriotic because he had resigned from [Henry] Kissinger's staff over the 1970 invasion of Cambodia...
...But there's another explanation behind the startling announcement: threats from Senate majority leader Trent Lott...
...And if Helms hangs tough, it's unclear Lott would dare to end-run him...
...He/she sent a letter to the Washington Post to inform them that by the time they read it, he'd be someone else...
...Who, we wondered, made such a suggestion...
...Green/Cameroon a onetime Navy submarine crewman, didn't want to overplay his/her hand...
...So, although Green/Cameroon wrote the program as a man, he/she would accept the award as a "transgen-dered female," on behalf of "me, other transpeople, and America...
...Enough already...
...The official Helms explanation is that he's reached agreement with Democrats on most of the treaty's outstanding issues...
...He made the announcement the same day he was cavorting in North Carolina with his pal Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who wants the treaty ratified...
...The prominent Democrat was the campaign consultant Bob Shrum—and the wonder of it all isn't that one partisan ended up on the mailing list of the opposing political party (it happens all the time), but that the Post, or anyone else, thinks such commonplace anecdotes still make a cute story...
...Democrats responded by threatening to block Senate action on a number of other measures if Lott couldn't promise consideration of the treaty by April 29, the date it goes into effect...
...Getting approbation from the editorial pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post may not be worth it...
...So sick of it, in fact, that this is the second time we've issued a ringing denunciation of the obnoxious journalistic trope...
...Scoundrel Time, Indeed Shortly after Anthony Lake withdrew his nomination to become the CIA director, Anthony Lewis of the New York Times wrote an extraordinary column, titled "Again, Scoundrel Time," in which he accused senators who opposed Lake's confirmation of McCarthyism...
...Green is reinventing himself...
...Last Friday the programmer accepted the award—as Jewelia Margueritta Cameroon, the woman into whom the former Mr...
...After all, threatening to go over the head of a committee chairman in support of the administration is a bit of a risk for Lott...
...Lewis responded that a reading of the transcript would confirm the justice of his charge...
...Richard Shelby of Alabama...
...But it's still possible that Helms will call Lott's bluff...
...We're sick of it...
...Trust us: They don't...
...Not Again...
...A similar letter went to Vice President Gore, imploring the veep to attend, since the award ceremony would be "greatly enhanced if either of you would congratulate me personally and shake my hand...
...I am in the process of changing my legal name to Jewelia Margueritta Cameroon and my legal gender to female...
...James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who had questioned Lake about the resignation, and perhaps the committee's chairman, Sen...
...The context suggests that Inhofe was accusing Lake, not of treason, but of advocacy...
...Well, yes we did...
...Gore touching me...
...Lott then announced that the treaty would come to a vote once the Senate returns from its recess on April 7. Helms has opted for now not to break with his leader...
...Transspotting_ The "reinventing government" initiative that Al Gore launched in 1993 has begun to reward all sorts of reinvention...
...So Lott dispatched one of his foreign policy aides, Randy Scheunemann, to the Senate parliamentarian's office to see if there was a way to spring the treaty out of the committee without Helms's consent...
...Inhofe added, "I [myself] demonstrated on different things...
...Did we doubt that Lake's patriotism had been impugned, the columnist asked...
...Oh, by the way, Scoundrel Time was the late Stalinist Lillian Hellman's deeply dishonest and self-serving memoir of the 1950s...
...And with Helms's staff alarmed about being rendered irrelevant in the treaty-ratification process, many observers expect the Foreign Relations Committee to approve a resolution of ratification...
...The Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, thought to be an implacable foe of the controversial treaty, has now indicated he might allow it to come to the Senate floor for a ratification vote...
...His National Performance Review Board has just recognized Richard Green of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, who wrote a computer program to streamline OSHA compliance...
...Yes, said the parliamentarian, it's possible...
Vol. 2 • April 1997 • No. 29
